Meaningful and engaging teaching techniques for student nurses: A literature review

Helping undergraduate nursing students to contextualise theory learnt in the classroom to their professional practice can be challenging for nurse educators. This article provides a critical review of contemporary literature that explores strategies and techniques that nurse educators within university settings have adopted to address this challenge. This review was conducted as part of a broader research project that involved interviewing nurse educators to explore how they attempt to make their teaching meaningful and engaging for student nurses. The data was analysed using thematic analysis and the intention is to share the wealth of ideas gleaned with other nurse educators, including in the form of an evidence-based inventory of teaching approaches found to be effective in enhancing the meaningfulness and engagement of content to nursing learners. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.